Well, it still looked great on liftoff. Also I cant believe how antonioe's words have cheered me up, and He is the one that works at Orbital! all I can say is great attitude, and as a result I am 100% sure that Orbital will find the problem, fix it, and keep on going strong:

My question about whether some of the experiments in OCO were duplicated by the recent Japanese GOSAT spacecraft has largely been answered, but I am curious as to whether any of the EOS spacecraft carried CO2 detection systems, since this was, after all, one of the rationales for Mission to Planet Earth.

Plus JAXA's GOSAT can make a lot of the same measurements. In one OCO briefing a while back someome stated that GOSAT and OCO can measure the same things by using different techniques. So having both would have enabled them to get a higher efficency and more reliability of the measurements. The loss of OCO is definetly nothing to be happy about, but some of the data can be gained now via GOSAT and maybe they will build a new OCO in time, improved with lessons learned via the GOSAT data.

Logged

You know, if I’d had a seat you wouldn’t still see me in this thing. - Chuck Yeager

PS, ordnance explodes. Ordinance is what sends you to jail if you make something explode.

O.K., O.K. this has been a rather [email protected]@py day, so a bit of humor is probably called for; did you ever read Ernest Nagels "Symbolic Logic, Haddock Eyes and the Dog-Walking Ordinance"? It goes like this:

From the Minutes of a Borough Council Meeting:

Councilor Trafford took exception to the proposed notice at the entrance of South Park: “No dogs must be brought to this Park except on a lead.” He pointed out that this order would not prevent an owner from releasing his pets, or pet, from a lead when once safely inside the Park.

The Chairman (Colonel Vine): What alternative wording would you propose, Councilor?

Councilor Trafford: “Dogs are not allowed in this Park without leads.”

Councilor Hogg: Mr. Chairman, I object. The order should be addressed to the owners, not to the dogs.

Councilor Trafford: That is a nice point. Very well then: “Owners of dogs are not allowed in this Park unless they keep them on leads.”

Councilor Hogg: Mr. Chairman, I object. Strictly speaking, this would prevent me as a dog-owner from leaving my dog in the back-garden at home and walking with Mrs. Hogg across the Park.

This is the type of thing that you solve inductively. You eliminate branches (fault tree) and bones (fishbone) and end up with certain ones that you don't have the evidence to eliminate. This will be the path unless there's a smoking gun in telemetry, which is typically known pretty quickly.

The spaceflight ordnance world has been a bogeyman for a few years now. Too much consolidation, too much turnover, not enough business to keep the good guys around.

I'm not going to argue with that, but we should acknowledge that we have no way to know if the ordinance itself was the problem here or not.

From the SpaceX Falcon 9 User Guide...

------------------------------

SpaceX has also minimized the number of stages (2) to minimize separation events. The separation system between the first and second stages does not incorporate electroexplosive devices, instead relying upon a pneumatic release and separation system that allows for acceptance testing of the actual flight hardware. This is not possible with a traditional explosive‐based separation system.

This is the type of thing that you solve inductively. You eliminate branches (fault tree) and bones (fishbone) and end up with certain ones that you don't have the evidence to eliminate. This will be the path unless there's a smoking gun in telemetry, which is typically known pretty quickly.

The spaceflight ordnance world has been a bogeyman for a few years now. Too much consolidation, too much turnover, not enough business to keep the good guys around.

I'm not going to argue with that, but we should acknowledge that we have no way to know if the ordinance itself was the problem here or not.

From the SpaceX Falcon 9 User Guide...

------------------------------

SpaceX has also minimized the number of stages (2) to minimize separation events. The separation system between the first and second stages does not incorporate electroexplosive devices, instead relying upon a pneumatic release and separation system that allows for acceptance testing of the actual flight hardware. This is not possible with a traditional explosive‐based separation system.

I didn't know anyone wrote FORTRAN anymore! (We still learned FORTRAN 77 when I was in college, though!)

I still write Fortran sometimes... it has its place in the mix of languages, especially in big science codes.

Antonio, commiserations, and bravo on your undaunted attitude. At some point if it's allowed, for the record, could you post an approximate actual orbit (sub-orbit, e.g. apogee and vel at apogee) achieved? I'd like to quantify the miss.

Orbital's had a fine record lately, it's clear they will bounce back fairly quickly from this.